A Jewish State Must Have a Jewish Majority
Week of March 17, 2006

Were the Israeli disengagement from Gaza intended to be a step towards peace, then it is a failure as a result of the Palestinian parliamentary elections won by Hamas in a landslide victory. But the disengagement was not meant to be an advance towards peace. It did however demonstrate Israeli weakness as it exposed an unequivocal truth. Holding territory containing an absolute Arab majority is impossible and furthermore, it poses a serious threat to Israel’s survival as a Jewish State. Gaza and its eight thousand Jews could not stand against more than one million Arabs.

Many of us are consciously aware of this reality but choose one or two paths of psychological denial. First and foremost is the unfortunate thought that prevails in many Jewish minds, the bus-conscious belief that Israel can keep every inch of Eretz Yisroel while knowing that doing so would only be possible if the Arabs living upon these lands were transferred to some unimaginable place outside of Biblical Israel. This idea was openly advocated by the late Rabbi Meir Kahana. There are many different reasons for rendering this idea even as a mere suggestion, absurd. Retaining the Arab population in Gaza, Samaria and Judea as an integral part of Israel makes them the majority in our democratic Jewish state. There are almost tow million Arabs on the West Bank, one million three hundred thousand in Gaza and a similar amount residing on undisputed Israeli land. Considering the Arab birthrate which is far greater than the number born to Jews each year, one can safely expect Arab numbers in excess of Jews in a very short time. Israel could no longer consider itself a democracy with one vote for each person. In fact it would spell doom.

The other delusion held by many is that the Arab population can be held in bantam states similar to those that existed in apartheid South Africa. For those of us who love and cherish each and every nook and cranny of Israel, the land of our fathers, reality hurts, it is very painful. Jewish life is not expendable. Dreams are beautiful but they are part of the unreal world of sleep. Believers such as myself, with strong belief and hope in the coming of the Messiah must wait until then, when all of the land will be Israel.

Peace too is a dream. The late Moshe Dayan predicted at least one hundred years of terror against Israel. In a conversation with him, I questioned this terrible prognostication. Could we survive unending terror, I asked. He quickly responded, “as long as we constitute a significant majority, terror could be reduced to a normal level of criminality that is part of every society.”

This last intifada gave us five years of living hell. We finally found a way to reduce Arab violence and suicide bombings against our people substantially. Much of it can be attributed to the yet unfinished barrier that separates Israelis from Arabs and with its completion; terror against Israel would b significantly diminished.

Ehud Olmert in his bid for Israel’s political leadership articulates a policy of disengagement from most of Samaria and Judea. He commits to keeping the communities within the Etzion block, Ma’aleh Adumim, Ariel and parts of the Jordan Valley. Well over one hundred Jewish communities home to tens of thousands of Jews will, according to his plan, be evacuated. All this, according to Olmert will be done without any prior negotiations with the Arabs, thus unilaterally. The real question that remains is fundamental and should be a pre-requisite to any withdrawal. First and foremost, will the Arabs interpret this as weakness on the part of Israel? The Hamas landslide win came soon after the Gaza disengagement. Will not Israel’s retreat from many more settlements bring even greater victory to the Arab terror movements? Would a unilateral separation enable Israel to draw its own borders without the imposition of external forces, not alone Arab but the United Nations and even the United States? Would such a self-determined border provide greater security for Israel?

Could Olmert, or for that matter any other Israeli leader assure Israel’s voters that these borders will remain unchanged? The answer to all of these questions is, I am afraid, negative. Good judgment therefore should tell Olmert and other Israeli leaders to be patient. After the Hamas victory, I would under no circumstances surrender land to Hamas. It would convince every Arab that terror is the path to victory and land.

Shabbat Shalom